Michael Palmer - A Heartbeat Away

Facedown on the blood-soaked ground, Griff continued flailing at the mammoth birds.

The sudden clang of his cell door finally caused the nightmare to loosen its grip. Reluctantly, the lurid images receded.

“Rhodes … Rhodes … Hey, asshole, wake up!…”

Donald Spinelli, the huge, heavy-lidded guard, stood across the room, by the naked toilet bowl, impatiently smacking his riot stick against his own thigh.

Griff rubbed his eyes, turned away from the unadorned cinder-block wall, and peered briefly across at the man. Then he rolled back onto his side, again facing the wall, utterly drained. The nightmares arising from his battle against Ebola weren’t an every night thing, but even after a decade, they still occurred frequently enough, and as vivid and inexorable as ever.

The guard moved to the side of Griff’s institutional cot and slapped him with force on the bare sole of his foot.

Unwilling to give the brute the satisfaction of hearing him cry out, Griff clenched his teeth against the stinging and gripped his heavy beard. He had practice dealing with pain. It would take more than a smack on the foot to get a reaction from him. Much more. Over the nearly nine months he had been in solitary confinement, all of the prison guards had been abusive to one extent or another. But Spinelli had been the worst. If physically possible, there was no way he would give the sadist any satisfaction. Still, it wasn’t worth provoking him.

“What do you want, Spinelli?”

“Put on your Sunday best, Rhodes. You’re leaving.”

“What?”

“Just what I said. You’re out of here.”

“Nine months in this cell with an hour a day walking in the yard alone, and all of a sudden, just like that, I’m out of here? This your idea of funny?”

“I wish. It’s real. Straight from the warden.”

“What’s going on?”

“I got no idea. When you get out there—” he motioned to the small barred window overlooking the exercise yard, “why don’t you ask the guys in that chopper?”

Senator Harlan Mackey had seen enough. Fear and chaos were erupting around him like Mount Vesuvius. People rushing for the exits were being forcibly turned back. And exactly where was America’s leader now? Gone. Vanished into a back room with his disgracefully inept Cabinet, looking like the reincarnation of Boss Tweed.

The Kentucky senator and majority whip would not tolerate Hiliard’s gross mishandling of this situation one second longer. Mackey’s well-known motto— No way, no how! —applied to this crisis the same as it did to any legislation he worked to defeat. And how dare Allaire violate the sanctity of the House Chamber—firing off a gun as though he were Wyatt Earp taking over some lawless Western town. People were ill, and from what Mackey could tell, they were only getting sicker. They did not need Jim Allaire. They needed medical care.

At least Mackey could feel grateful that his son’s math teacher had refused to reschedule an exam. Because of the man’s inflexibility, Jack and his mother had passed up their pilgrimage to D.C. for the State of the Union Address. Lucky them.

Many people had begun grudgingly to return to their seats, although a number of others were still milling around the aisles and shoving toward the doorways, demanding with escalating vehemence to be let out. Mackey wondered how long it would be before somebody got hurt—really hurt—by one of Allaire’s Capitol Police goons.

And what, exactly, had they been exposed to? Was Genesis really responsible? Did they really pose a threat worthy of Allaire holding the Congress and so many others hostage? If so, why didn’t they just quarantine the coughing people and let everybody else go? The closest puff of smoke was many rows away from where he was sitting, and Mackey had yet to feel any symptom at all. God knew at least a third of the chamber had that hacking cough now. If Mackey were in charge, that’s exactly what he would have done. Keep the sick away from the healthy.

Goddamn Allaire .

Did the man think they were all stupid? Of course he did. Allaire’s arrogance defied all boundaries. Well, if he thought Harlan Mackey would be a good little solider and sit tight inside a potential death trap, then he grossly underestimated this senator’s resolve.

People continued to mill around Mackey, who decided then and there that he would escape this nightmare.

“Senator Mackey! Senator Mackey!”

People continuing to converge into the center aisle, yelling at the security guards, coughing, and crying, made it hard for Mackey to spot Frost Keaton, a junior staff assistant from his office, waving his arms and calling his name. Poor Frost. For his exemplary job performance, Mackey had awarded Keaton Jack’s much sought-after SOU ticket. Keaton pushed his way through the crowd and, typically, seemed more concerned for his boss than he did for himself. Dumb kid.

“What’s going on, Senator?” Keaton asked. “Is it true that Genesis is behind this?”

“I don’t know, son. Like you, I’m waiting for the president to return. I’m sure we’ll all know something soon enough.”

“Well, I had some new ideas for our highway bill. I guess I’ll just work on those while we’re waiting.”

Mackey felt a brief pang for the twenty-two-year-old American University grad and his endless supply of optimistic energy.

“Are you worried?” Keaton said.

“Me? No. Son, it takes a lot more than all this to worry this old farmer.”

Mackey flashed on the idea of taking Keaton with him. But just then, the boy coughed.

Are there more people coughing now? the senator wondered. If so, he would have to move even faster.

“Look, son, you stay here. I’m going to see if I can learn what’s going on. I’ll let you know what I find out. For now, just sit tight and wait for me to come back.”

The young aide stifled another cough.

“Thank you, sir,” he managed.

Mackey served as one of ten on the Capitol Complex Appropriations Board. The committee handled everything from human resources for the Capitol’s extensive operational staff to routine maintenance issues. Few knew all the secrets of the Capitol complex. Thanks to that committee, Mackey knew nearly every one of them. Every way in, and most important, every way out. At least now those insipid hours spent haggling on that wart of a committee might prove to be worthwhile.

The speaker of the house, Ursula Ellis, had left her seat and was making her way around their party’s half of the hall. She was an incredibly capable woman, and given another month or so, she just might have won. Now, hopefully, she was mobilizing people to take a stand against Allaire, regardless of what position he took.

Nobody was standing near the podium, and the crush of people was moving in the opposite direction. Perfect.

Mackey walked past the rostrum to a spot in the corridor twenty feet beyond. The trapdoor beneath the carpeting was nearly invisible. It had been constructed to reach a maintenance area on the next level down, which housed the workings of the lift that provided wheelchair access to the tribune.

Nobody noticed as the senator quickly descended the stairs and closed the door behind him. The darkness surrounding him was nearly total. He found the wall switch and located a dank, seven-foot-high tunnel, dimly lit by a series of unadorned, wall-mounted fixtures, running in an east-west direction from the base of the lift. Mackey followed it to where he knew it would split into two passageways.

The longer of the two tunnels, tiled, better lit, and cleaner, would, after some distance, connect with a flight of stairs to a hallway linking the Rayburn House Building to the Capitol. A solid, wooden door opened only from that side. Mackey suspected that the Rayburn tunnel would be guarded at its entrance, as many in Congress used it to bypass the security lines in the visitors’ center. Instead, his plan took him into the darker tunnel, on the left.